Technology

Who made the first ski boots without laces? Henke in 1955, right?

Wrong. In the postwar years, Joseph Mauron, a 21-year-old Swiss shoemaker, had had it with frozen laces on double-laced boots. He experimented with alternate systems, and settled on a clever design with two buckled straps: the first one fastened down a snow-proof cover (what we would today call the external tongue), and the second held the foot firmly in place and kept the heel down in the boot. That second strap crossed the instep three times and tightened around the Achilles for better purchase on the heel.
Introduced in 1948, the Mauron boot that year received the Diplôme de Vermeil medal from the International Leather Bureau in Paris, and the following year a gold medal from the International Leather Organization in London. Mauron lacked the resources to market the boot successfully. He died in 1993.

For the record, Heierling used a similar instep-and-heel strap in 1941 to supplement a laced double-boot. In 1953, the Swiss ski racer and stunt pilot Hans Martin patented his over-center buckle, and licensed it to Henke, already one of the world’s leading boot factories. Henke introduced the laceless buckle boot in 1955, to worldwide acclaim. —Luzi Hitz

In January 1968, Skiing Magazine ran this profile, written by John Jerome, of Ed Scott, founder of Scott USA.

Ed Scott may be the most humorous man I’ve ever met. Yet I don’t believe I ever saw him really break up in laughter. Rather, he’ll pursue a line of conversation in a direction that amuses him, and he’ll pause, turn his wide-eyed spectacles full upon you, and you’ll notice his upper lip twitch slightly. That’s all. If you haven’t broken up yourself by that point, you’d do well to re-examine the past two or three minutes of conversation—because Scotty has just cracked some tremendous private joke, and it would be worthwhile to figure out what it was.

Among the things he thinks are funny are most of the big shots in skiing, international racing and its convoluted internecine wars, international ski business and its convoluted internecine wars, his own business efforts, life in the Sun Valley area, life, and himself. Among the things he is dead serious about are—well, just read that list again...

The MV2, designed by Jean Liard and introduced in 1964, was a magnificent giant slalom ski, raced to a downhill win at Morzine that winter by Mariel Goitschel, and to World Championship gold medals at Portillo, in 1966, by Goitschel and Guy Périllat. It was unique in its era for having not two but three layers of aluminum -- specifically a hard alloy of Aluminum, zinc and copper called Zicral. Like all top racing skis of the late 1960s, it had a wood core with aluminum layers top and bottom, but the core was reinforced with a third sheet of aluminum, formed into a “hat-section” rib the factory called an omega, for its rough resemblance to the Greek letter Ω. That rib reinforced the MV2 in torsional stiffness, giving it tremendous edgehold when turning on ice.

Historically, the MV2 is unique, blending American and French inventions.

The story begins at the Vought-Sikorsky aircraft factory in Connecticut, in 1945. The factory is best known for the Vought F4U Corsair fighter, one of the fastest and, piloted by U.S. Marine aviators, most capable aircraft of World War II. As it became clear that the end of the war was near, Vought-Sikorsky managers expected aircraft orders to drop sharply, so they looked around for consumer products they could build and sell. Because the company knew how to laminate aluminum to balsa wood, some bright soul decided that Vought could build skis. The project was handed to three of the company’s engineers, who happened to be skiers: Arthur Hunt, Wayne Pearce and Dave Richey. In short order they created the prototype of an aluminum “sandwich” ski -- a lightweight wood core between aluminum top and bottom sheet. The Vought factory ran off 1000 pairs and created the brand name Truflex. It was the first mass-produced aluminum ski.

By 1946, as the French and other European air forces rebuilt after the war, orders flowed in for the Corsair, and the company became busy building helicopters. The ski wasn’t needed, and management killed the Truflex project. Hunt, Pearce and Richey quit and formed their own ski company, introducing the Alu 60 in 1947. In order not to violate the Vought patent, they dropped the wood core and made their ski from two layers of aluminum: a flat base sheet and the hat-section topskin to reinforce it and control flex (see cross-section drawing, top of page). The trio then invented the celluloid-plastic yellow TEY Tape, applied to the aluminum base to improve glide speed (TEY referred to the last letters of their names). Then they invented the snow gun,  which was so successful that they quit making skis. But Adolf Attenhofer, who owned a sizeable ski factory in Switzerland, bought the Alu 60 patent and began marketing the ski as the Attenhofer Metallic. He licensed manufacturing to the French sporting goods firm Charles Dieupart & Fils, who created the Aluflex brand. By adding a strip of wood under the hat-section top, Dieupart smoothed out the ski’s ride and vibration. Beginning in 1954, Aluflex was a big hit in France. Former World Champion James Couttet put his name on it. Aluflex and Couttet skis were widely adopted by ski instructors and even by the French Army’s mountain troops. Actual manufacturer was the metal-products company Les Ressorts du Nord (Northern Springs – as in auto suspensions).

In the mid-50s, fiberglass became available in commercial quantities. In France, Paul Michal’s Dynamic factory, building great wooden slalom skis since 1931, spent seven years experimenting with the new material and learned how to wrap wet fiberglass around a wood core to create, with the help of Charles Bozon, the VR7 of 1960 (VR for verre résine, or resin glass, 7 for the development time). The ski hit the race circuit in 1962 and was an instant success. That year Aluflex formed a partnership with ski-binding distributor Claude Joseph, who had begun building fiberglass skis under the company name Les Plastiques Synthetiques. Ressorts du Nord built a new factory in Sallanches, just down-valley from Chamonix. The glass ski was named Starflex, to be marketed alongside Aluflex.

The chief engineer at the Sallanches factory was Jean “Jeannot” Liard. He developed the Starflex fiberglass ski into a slalom model called the Compound RG5 (RG for resin glass, an Anglicized tribute to the VR7). Air bubbles in the resin caused the tips to break. Liard called on engineers from Dynamic to help iron out the production problem. In order to repair the RG5 reputation, the new company paid Michal for the right to put a Dynamic seal of approval on every RG ski -- then launched the Dynastar brand. Michal and his team weren’t amused by the copy-cat branding, and killed the consulting relationship. Meanwhile, Charles Dieupart fell out with Ressorts du Nord and split, taking Aluflex with him. His new venture didn't last long.

Meanwhile Liard needed a new aluminum ski. Onto the existing Aluflex structure (flat aluminum base, hat-section aluminum top rib) he added a flat aluminum topsheet. The ski now contained three layers of Zicral aluminum and three strips of wood (one under the “hat” rib, one on each side). It was stable, precise and very fast. Liard named the ski MV2 for “mass times velocity squared,” the formula for calculating energy. And that’s the ski you’re looking at here – a direct descendent of the Connecticut-built Alu 60 of 1947. –Seth Masia, International Skiing History Association

This article is based on information from several sources, chiefly Une histoire du ski, by Franck Cochoy; “Eight Classics,” by Morten Lund (SKI Magazine, January 1986); interviews with Michel Arpin and Adrien Duvillard (both now deceased); and Jean Liard. Many thanks to Jean-François Lanvers for interviewing Liard.

Early boot design was dictated by binding design. The modern era introduced new materials, fit and height that led to a revolution in alpine technique.

BY SETH MASIA

In the beginning, Norwegian farmers and hunters used their daily work shoes when skiing. Until the 1840s, the typical ski binding was a simple leather strap that passed across the front of the boot. The main design concern was to keep the inside of the boot dry, so the socks could do their job of insulating the foot. Water repellency depended on tough top-grain leather liberally slathered with a mixture of wax and animal fat. This combination of a flexible boot, simple binding, and skis without steel edges was useful mainly for running across meadows and gently rolling woodland, and an occasional sporting ski jump. The simple forefoot strap imposed a limit on running performance: If the skier kicked back too briskly, the boot could slip backward out of the strap. Saami skiers—the original Lapplanders—had a solution for this: They built a vertical lip onto the toe of their reindeer-hide boot, to keep it from sliding back through the binding strap. Sometimes this lip became an exaggerated curled-up toe; Santa’s elves are often depicted wearing Saami boots.

When skiing became a sport, and skiers began to tackle steeper hillsides and real jumps, skiers needed better control of both steering and edging. Bindings grew stiffer, with the invention around 1840 of the heel strap to pull the boot firmly forward into the toe strap. Sondre Norheim and his friends, for instance, devised a heel-strap binding of braided willow. When Fridtjof Nansen equipped his team for the 1888 crossing of Greenland, the Saami-style toe was still in use, but a buckle loop had been added to keep the heel strap in place.

The toe strap then evolved into the rigid steel toe iron, and the heel strap became more robust in order to push the boot firmly into the toe iron. These developments required a boot with a stiffer, heavier sole, usually reinforced with a wooden shank to resist crumpling under the forward pressure of the heel strap. The heavy sole was extended front and back to provide purchase for the toe iron and heel strap. Climbing boots of the era were made on a similar pattern to accommodate crampons, but had steel cleats or calks nailed to the soles for traction, which would have destroyed any wooden ski top in short order.

From village cobbler to mass production

Until the 1870s, all of these boots were handmade by local cobblers. Mass production of military boots, nailed and screwed together mechanically, became common in England during the Napoleonic Wars, and during America’s Civil War, Union troops were equipped with mass-produced boots made to the first-ever standard sizing system. These developments didn’t really affect ski boot design. Because climbers and skiers ordered their boots from someone they knew in the village, nearly all ski boots were, in fact, custom made—the cobbler measured your foot before starting work. 

This changed with the introduction, in the United States, of industrial sewing machines and mass-produced shoes and boots. The key inventions were the Goodyear welt, developed beginning in 1865 by mechanics working for Charles Goodyear, Jr.; and the automatic lasting machine, patented in 1883 by Jan Matzeliger. The inventions were promptly put to work in New England’s mill towns. By 1876, the G.H. Bass boot factory in Portland, Maine, cranked out a thousand pairs of shoes and work boots every day. European shoe factories sprang up using the new industrial sewing equipment, and by 1885 companies in Switzerland, France, Germany, Great Britain and Italy shipped thousands of shoes and boots daily. Around the turn of the century, the first mass-produced leather ski boots appeared in sporting goods catalogs.

The first alpine boots

For a quarter century thereafter, the typical ski boot was just a lace-up work boot with a roomy box toe (to accommodate those wool socks) and an extended sole to mate with the heel-strap binding of the era. Then, in 1928, the Swiss ski racer Guido Reuge invented a cable binding designed to hold the heel down for alpine skiing. He named the binding after the Kandahar series of alpine ski races. 

The powerful steel cable and front-throw adjuster cranked hard on the boot sole, which had to be stiffened considerably. At this point, alpine ski boot design diverged from nordic boots. Boots for cross-country racing and ski jumping needed a flexible sole. But because alpine racing didn’t require the boot to flex at the ball of the foot, the sole could be built with a stiff full-length shank. And because alpine skiers wanted the foot held firmly down on the ski, bootmakers created an instep strap. Coincidentally, 1928 was the year the mountaineer Rudolf Lettner invented the segmented steel edge for alpine skis. Suddenly, skis could be controlled on steep and icy faces—if your boots were stiff enough to drive the edges.

Most skiers used inexpensive mass-produced ski boots, but racers, instructors and wealthier sportsmen ordered their boots custom-made, from ski-town cobblers in the Alps. A few of these craftsmen, like Peter Limmer Sr., set up shop in America. 

After World War II, custom bootmakers developed the double boot, with a soft and comfy lace-up inner boot protected and stiffened by a thick bull-hide outer casing laced with heavy-duty corset hooks. The complex design was difficult to reproduce with machines, and the European cottage industry adapted to mass production of hand-stitched leather boots. Companies like Henke in Switzerland, Le Trappeur in France and Nordica in Italy employed hundreds of workers to export hand-stitched boots.

With the commercialization of ski boots came the first serious marketing campaigns, and the first athlete endorsements. In 1950, when the Nordica shoe factory in Montebelluna, Italy, sold its first ski boots, the company had the good fortune to equip Zeno Colò, who won two World Championships at Aspen that winter. The publicity put Nordica on the map.

Even with several layers, leather boots were not very waterproof, warm or durable. If you skied more than a few days a year, boots quickly grew soft and sloppy. An aggressive skier needed new boots each winter, an expensive proposition. It was possible to soak leather in glue and make it stiff as a board, but then the boot couldn’t be laced closed, and wouldn’t adapt to the shape of the foot. Even reinforced boots got wet and softened steadily. Like many top racers, Jean-Claude Killy loaned boots to friends for breaking in. When the boots were “seasoned”—comfortable but not yet soft—they were good for a few races. Something better was needed.

Buckles and wedeln

A partial solution to making boots stiffer and more durable arrived in 1954, when Swiss bike racer and stunt pilot Hans Martin patented the ski boot buckle. His original patent specified a quick-adjust “lacing system” with overlapping boot flaps, to allow loosening for climbing and tightening for descents. Martin licensed the patent to Henke, and went to work helping to design their boots. The buckle was far more powerful than any set of laces and could close a very stiff boot. Quick, short turns became possible, and the tail-wagging wedeln technique became popular in ski schools around the world. To make boots even stiffer, bootmakers added internal plastic heel cups and cuff reinforcements.

Plastics and edging power

Then, during the half-decade from 1966 to 1972, everything changed. By 1962, European bootmakers were experimenting with sheets of plastic laminated to the outer leather for waterproofing and improved durability. At the same time, Bob Lange and Dave Luensmann made the first vacuum-molded plastic boot shell, and the following year figured out how to mold it from liquid urethane (see “50 Years of Lange” in the March-April 2015 issue of Skiing History).  Nordica’s Aldo Vaccari—a chemical engineer by training—saw the Lange boot and quickly figured out how to replace 

hand-stitching of the leather sole with a waterproof polyurethane outsole, permanently bonded to the leather upper, using high-speed injection molding machinery. This was a big improvement, quickly adopted by competing factories. It superseded eighty years of lasting machinery based on sewing-machine technology.

But the real revolution occurred in 1966, when Lange equipped the Canadian ski team with plastic boots for the Alpine World Championships in Portillo (see “Fifty Years of Lange,” March-April 2015). The boots were a sensation—it quickly became clear that laterally stiff plastic boots dramatically improved edging power on ice, and that they would eventually dominate racing. At the 1968 Olympics, Jean-Claude Killy won four gold medals in his fiberglass-reinforced leather Le Trappeur Elite boots (including the FIS Combined championship), and his French teammates won six more, all in leather boots. Only five of 24 medals were won in plastic Langes (by Nancy Greene and Heini Messner), and one or two in the fiberglass Raichle, but the handwriting was on the wall. Leather boots soon disappeared from racing. Nordica introduced its first all-plastic boot that year. Neighboring boot factories in Montebelluna rushed to make “plastic” boots with urethane-coated leather. By the following year full-bore injection-molded boots were available from Kastinger and Peter Kennedy, Rosemount was shipping its fiberglass boot, and Mel Dalebout offered a magnesium shell.

Spoilers and avalement

Meanwhile, French racers developed a new technique using knee flex to absorb or “swallow” the cross-under portion of turn initiation. This was dubbed avalement, French for swallowing. The move demanded full use of the ski tail in powering the turn exit, and that required a higher boot back. In 1961, Le Trappeur introduced the Elite (See Le Trappeur Elite), a stiff, forward-canted boot that gave racers a better tool for knee-flexed pressure control, and it was widely imitated by Nordica, Heierling, Heschung and other factories. In 1966, Canadian Dave Jacobs told Bob Lange to make the Lange Comp ski like the Trappeur. Before the 1972 Sapporo Olympics, “spoilers” appeared on racing boots, including the stovepipe Lange Comp and sleek leather Nordica Sapporo and plastic Olympic, designed by Sven Coomer (see

“Master Boot Laster,” May-June 2014). By 1973, driven mainly by Coomer at Nordica, the fully modern ski boot had emerged, with its removable and customizable innerboot, overlap or external-tongue closure, and hinged cuff with a high-back spoiler. The Nordica Grand Prix became the model for almost all high-performance boots to follow. Plastic boots didn’t break in like leather, and required “flow” materials or some form of adaptable or injected foam to conform comfortably to the infinite variety of foot shapes.

There were significant departures from this model: the warm and comfortable rear entry boot, first sold by Freyrie, Montan and Heschung in 1968, had a good run beginning with Hanson in 1971, and accounted for 80 percent of all boots sold by 1987 (see The Rear Entry Boot).. But racers weren’t impressed, preferring the closer shell-to-foot fit of overlap designs. Most factories kept a few overlap race models in production, and by 1990 most high-performance boots returned to that model. In 1980, half a dozen factories introduced innovative knee-high boots, which proved both comfortable and powerful—but the ski pants of the era didn’t fit over the tops, so ski shops quit selling them after a year. 

There were also some design improvements. A huge step forward came when ski boot sole shapes standardized in the 1970s. It meant that ski bindings finally had a reliably consistent mechanical surface to grasp. Driven by international standard-setting organizations, binding design consolidated around a well-understood set of engineering principles, and the rate of lower-leg injuries dropped by 90 percent.

In the late ‘70s, Mel Dalebout invented the detachable and cantable outsole. Sven Coomer developed the custom-fit “orthotic” insole to improve power, comfort and precision in any boot, and then, in 1983, working for Koflach, he introduced the power strap, which had the effect of a fifth buckle at the top, bringing the effective tongue height to mid-shin. Henke introduced the three-piece shell (“bathtub” lower shell, external tongue, upper cuff) with the Strato in 1971, and the concept took off with the introduction of Nordica’s Comp 3 (1978) and Raichle's Flexon (1980) (see Origin of the Three-piece boot). That Raichle is still in production under K2’s Full Tilt brand. Over the decades, several attempts were made to popularize soft and comfortable “walking” boots that could slip into a supportive exoskeleton for skiing (Ramer, Bataille, Nava). Denny Hanson finally made it work with the new Apex brand. 

And that’s where we stand. 

As technical editor of SKI Magazine for 20 years, Seth Masia witnessed much of the modern evolution of ski equipment. He wishes to thank Gary Neptune for providing sample boots for photography, from the Neptune Mountaineering collection.

From Jet Stix to Tinkle Tabs, these crazy ski products faded, fizzled or failed to stand the test of time. By Jeff Blumenfeld

As empty-nesting downsizers moving from Connecticut to Boulder, my wife and I had to contend with the accumulated flotsam of 30-plus years of marriage. It was especially hard to part with ski equipment, apparel and accessories. Each imparted great memories of days spent on the slopes.

I gave away my Graves skis. I unceremoniously pitched the Kneissl Blue Star OPs from the early 1980s, along with my Cevas and Club A one-piece suits.

But I couldn’t say goodbye to my Ski Wings. Yes, Ski Wings—butterfly-shaped air scoops that attach to ski poles. Four aerodynamically balanced nylon pockets form a cushion of air in front of you. Head straight down a steep bump run and you feel like you’re flying as you literally skim across the tops of moguls.

Originally known as ski sails, this odd product dates back at least as far as Leo Gasperl (1932) and Stein Eriksen, who used them in 1968–69 at Snowmass in Colorado (Skiing History, July-August 2011). They have since been reinvented in Europe as Wingjumps, “the first skiing equipment to offer the feeling of being lifted while skiing, in complete safety!” (That claim, of course, remains to be seen.)

What is it about skiing and snowboarding that inspires budding inventors?

“Scores of ingenious Rube Goldberg ideas have invaded the sport throughout its history,” writes ISHA chairman John Fry, author of The Story of Modern Skiing  (UPNE, 2006). “There was a ski whose performance could be altered by pumping air into it. Another ski contained rods that you could tighten and loosen to adjust flex and camber.
“Still another contained oil that allegedly caused the ski’s performance to alter in relation to snow surface and temperature. There were bizarre little devices to prevent skis from crossing, and a pair of swiveling rods to keep the skis parallel at all times, so that the skier would never suffer the embarrassment of being seen vee-ing them in a stem.”

Exploring Vintage Ski World

A leading connoisseur of crazy ski products is ISHA board member Richard Allen, 65, owner of Vintage Ski World, one of the largest private collections of ski memorabilia. Visiting his warehouse is a trip in itself: You drive uphill miles from Colorado State Highway 82 to reach a rustic five-acre hillside home and warehouse overlooking Mount Sopris and the Elk Range in Carbondale.

Allen, a former Aspen carpet cleaner, began collecting skis and other gear in the late 1980s, including a pair of handmade Norwegian wooden skis that his grandfather used in the early 1900s. Today his inventory includes 800 pairs of skis, including many in mint unmounted condition, plus hundreds of boots, poles and goggles, and thousands of pins, patches and posters.

When two episodes of Mad Men and the 2010 cult classic Hot Tub Time Machine came looking for vintage ski gear, Allen provided the necessary props, still regretting to this day that he sold movie producers his best neon outfits.

His home is packed with snowshoe lamps, sled coffee tables, a wall of vintage ski boots, toboggan bookshelves, ski mirrors that he makes himself, and even toilet plungers made from ski poles. Enter his warehouse and you’ve stepped back into skiing history.

There’s the very analog Skidometer, “the Simple Practical Ski Speedometer.” You wear it on the left sleeve, move the needle to the forward position, then read your highest downhill speed in miles per hour. It was invented in 1972 by New York neurologist Dr. Asa P. Ruskin and sold for $5.95. In a precursor to today’s warnings about texting and driving, it sagely cautions, “Do not attempt to read speed while skiing.”

Allen’s collection also includes heavy 1970s-era magnesium ski boots from DaleBoot—a hinged magnesium shell with a rubber closure over the instep. If Herman Munster skied, you’d see him in these. Mel Dalebout’s magnesium shell was produced from 1969 to 1971 and was paired with his patented silicon-injection custom fit inner boot, precursor of all injected foam boots (the magnesium may also have been the world’s first three-piece or cabriolet shell).

And there on a shelf was the Nava boot, part of a boot-binding system the likes of which were never seen before, according to Seth Masia writing in Skiing History (March 2005). Nava, an Italian manufacturer of motorcycle helmets and accessories, decided in the mid-1980s it needed a counter-seasonal winter product and designed this boot/binding system, introduced in Europe around 1986. It reached North America in 1988.

It consisted of a soft, warm, waterproof knee-high mukluk with an aggressive snow-walking tread. Hidden in the sole was a stainless steel lug that mated to a release binding on the ski; to provide edging power a spring-loaded lever arm was hinged to the back of the binding, Masia reports.

Ski journalist Steve Cohen writes in Ski Magazine (January 1990), “They tried to build the better mousetrap and succeeded. Unfortunately, they tried to sell them as ski bindings.”

My tour continues with the Bousquet Ski Tow Rope Gripper, patented in 1941 (Skiing History, March-April 2017) and the Digi 180 Sportlens System that had a brief run as a combined visor and ski goggle in 1993. Selling for $49.95 ($85 in 2017 dollars), its brochure touts total vision protection by completely “sealing eyes” and “combatting” the sun with full UV protection” (assuming you didn’t mind looking like a robot).

Surrounded by all this skiing history, I ask the soft-spoken Allen why skiing attracts such product innovation. “The joy of being outside and skiing opens the mind and spirit to ideas, including dreaming up new inventions,” he says. “Budding inventors who ski have a lot of chair time to dream up products and ideas.”

A Flash in the Pan

Following my exploration of Vintage Ski World, I surveyed a number of ski industry journalists, retailers and manufacturers to compile a strange collection of ski products—the sport’s equivalent of the Mos Eisley Cantina, the famed bar scene in Star Wars.

When this unique gear first came out, inventors had high hopes of generating untold riches as skiers and riders flocked to retailers to be the first on their block to own one. Consider how many of these unusual ski products were a flash in the pan, but evoke plenty of smiles today.

Skis are Overrated: Why endure the hassles of lugging skis around when all you need are slippery boots? That was the theory behind Dalbello SnowRunners, which were introduced in 1992 and covered that December in SKI Magazine. The plastic boots had metal edges on a slick, flat base and came in men’s, women’s and children’s sizes. They were later renamed Sled Dogs.
“Retailers acted like it was untreated radioactive waste as they saw people coming in and spending a thousand dollars less per person to get outfitted for a ski holiday,” says David Peri, a wintersports marketing consultant who was involved at the time.

To the bemusement of millions of viewers, Sled Dogs received their 15 minutes of fame during the opening ceremonies of the 1994 Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway. You can still buy a pair online at sleddogs.com. (To see a video of a skier on Snow Runners, go to: https://youtu.be/_xYZmDwcWF8)

Snots Landing: Vail-based Snot Spot felt that your $160 gloves were missing a washable, slip-on bib to catch snotsicles. Launched in 2006, it didn’t have a good “run”—they’re now off the market.  

We’ll Drink to That: Taos is famous for its martini trees—hidden bottles of martinis hanging from trees. But why hunt around for a tipple when you can carry one in your poles? That’s where the 2004 Coldpole comes in, the “Liquid Reservoir Ski Pole.” The grip unscrews to provide access to the natural storage capability of the pole—about eight ounces. And the opening is durable plastic so your lips never touch cold metal. A cleaning brush is provided with every pair, which oddly makes us feel a whole lot better about this crazy ski product.

Hot Dogging: Here’s a clever concept that dates to the early 1960s: to keep skiers warm, we’re going to light a campfire in their pocket. Jon-E Hand Warmers, carried in a flannel bag, ran on lighter fluid and sometimes caused rashes where it met the skin. They were made by Aladdin Manufacturing Co. in Minneapolis, a place that presumably knows a thing or two about cold. These days, you can find a used model—if for some reason you want one—on eBay or Etsy.

Sit Back and Enjoy the Ride: Jet Stix first appeared during the 1970–71 winter season. Invented by former U.S. Olympian Jack Nagel, who ran the ski school and shop at Washington’s Crystal Mountain, these were fiberglass braces that fit the lower calf above the boot and secured in place using the top boot buckle. Before these came along, kids were fashioning them out of Popsicle sticks and duct tape, according to Gregg Morrill of Vermont’s Stowe Reporter (February 9, 2012).

Jet Stix were designed to be high-backs for low-back boots like the Lange Comp, a year before Lange introduced its own high-back boot in response to Nordica’s high-back race boots. They were helped along by universal adoption of avalement (allowing the knees to flex and absorb bumps) in racing, and general toilet turns by recreational mogul skiers.
The product was a temporary fix until skiers could buy new boots and had a very short life cycle. Morrill believes Jet Stix were pre-empted by the next fad, which was short skis. (Not the short skis we have today which were engineered for their shorter lengths, but just shorter lengths of the popular skis of the day.)

Tinkle, Tinkle Little Star: Men might find it hard to relate, but Roffe “Tinkle Tabs” were quite a hit through the 1970s when one-piece suits were popular. When the snap on the sleeves of a women’s jumpsuit was undone, and the tab was fed under the belt and snapped back into place, the sleeves of that $500 outfit couldn’t fall on the wet floor of the ladies room—and we can imagine how disgusting that can be.

Alas, when one-piece suits went the way of neon colors, it was buh-bye, Tinkle Tabs. Maybe they should have focused on a product to prevent ski gloves from falling into the toilet; it took years before resorts starting installing gear baskets in their stalls.

Two Hands Are Better Than One: Skiers aren’t the only ones t

o benefit from, er, innovation. With two handles and a set of bindings, the Two-Handed Snow Scooter was a snowboard designed in 2005 for control-freak master puppeteers—a very niche market, writes Illicitsnowboarding.com. It joins other crazy snowboard products including Lift Tethers and Legsavers for riding lifts. 

Somehow skiing and snowboarding survived these get-rich-slow schemes. But driving north up Route 100 in Vermont, I sure wish someone would invent a better-tasting gas station hot dog. That would be a product that’s not too crazy at all.

If you have a favorite odd or crazy product you remember using, or still use, tell us about it. Post it on our Facebook page (facebook.com/skiinghistory) or email kathleen@skiinghistory.org. 

Jeff Blumenfeld, an ISHA board member, runs Blumenfeld and Associates PR and ExpeditionNews.com in Boulder, Colorado. He is the recipient of the 2017 Bob Gillen Memorial Award from the North American Snowsports Journalists Association. For more information on Vintage Ski World, go to VintageSkiWorld.com.

How a young Killington employee in 1963 found a new and better way to attach lift tickets to people. By Karen D. Lorentz

Jennifer Hanley was shocked when she went skiing in Tignes, France in 1987 and was handed a lift ticket and a wicket. “She had no idea the wicket had spread to Europe,” recalls her father Charlie Hanley, who invented the now-ubiquitous wire device in 1963.

“For 40 years, the wicket was useful,” he adds. He’s being modest. More than 50 years later—despite the development of new technologies and methods, like RFID cards and plastic zip-ties—wickets are still in use at ski resorts around the world.

In the summer of 1960, Hanley was running Golf-land, his miniature golf course and snack bar in Bomoseen, Vermont. “They could use you up at Killington,” said his Pepsi Cola rep. In need of winter work, Hanley scheduled an interview with Killington founder Preston Leete Smith.

“I was intrigued by the ski-area venture, so I agreed to design and build a kitchen system for the new base lodge,” says Hanley. “Killington couldn’t afford to hire me until after Christmas, so I said I could start in October and be paid retroactively. They jumped at the deal! I got $1.50 an hour.” That winter, he and his wife Jane also ran the resort’s food-service operation.

Recognizing Charlie’s expertise in writing detailed reports, Smith promoted him to “systems analyst,” a position that entailed “trying to solve any problem” that Hanley spotted. To address the theft of rental skis, he installed a Regiscope, “a machine I’d seen in a local supermarket. It took simultaneous pictures of the skier and rental slip and solved the theft problem because a picture is intimidating to a thief. It worked so well that we never had to develop the film.”

A bigger problem: transfer of lift tickets
Having started Killington on a shoestring in 1958, Smith faced a more serious problem with his stapled-on lift tickets. Not only did they leave holes in skiers’ clothing, they were often transferred from one skier to another, denying the area much-needed revenue.

“We noticed that some people were trying to attach tickets using pipe cleaners,” recalls Smith. “I wanted something with more strength yet less bendable, so it wouldn’t break or come off easily.”

Hanley remembers seeing a presentation in Smith’s office by a man wanting to sell “a complicated device. It was a regular keychain with a tiny ring attached at one end and a large coil at the other end.

“When he saw me studying it, the salesman said, ‘Oh, I see you, young fellow. You think you can find a way to make it simpler. Well, it can’t be done.’ I’ll never forget that. He was just arrogant enough to get me thinking. We sent him on his way and in five minutes I had the concept in mind. I took an eight-inch piece of wire and bent it in such a way as to allow the wire to be slipped through a zipper talon, belt loop or buttonhole, or around a strap. The heavy-duty paper lift ticket could be folded and stapled over the gizmo’s legs. We called it the gizmo until Jane came up with the name.”

“The U-shape reminded me of the wickets in croquet, so I suggested ticket wicket,” says Jane.

From design to patent
Offered a free trip around the country if he could prove that the wicket would sell, Hanley took his tall blond wife to a national ski operators’ convention, where she demonstrated how the wicket could be attached to clothing without damaging the fabric. As Jane shed various layers, she showed that the wicket would work with parkas, sweaters, stretch pants and, finally, a swimsuit.

Sales were so good that the Hanleys enjoyed the promised trip across ski country in the fall of 1963. “We visited most of the major areas in the United States—there weren’t that many then,” Charlie recalls. “Vail had just opened and I came away with a sense of awe.” Stops in Denver, Seattle, Snoqualmie and Sun Valley are standout memories, as was one visit to an Ohio gravel pit: “Someone had dug out dirt and piled it into a hill and put a lift on it.” Their late-1950s Citroën had a passenger seat that reclined, so one could sleep while the other drove during the three-week journey. 

For the 1963–1964 season, Killington sold 750,000 stainless-steel wickets to 62 U.S. ski areas. The next season, they switched to galvanized wire, which cost 40 percent less, and sold to 100 areas.  In the third season, they hired a Connecticut firm to handle the growing sales. A fall 1965 ad in Ski Area Management magazine read: “Stopping just one cheater in 1,000 skiers will pay for the cost of Ticket Wickets.” (A lift ticket cost $5-$7 then.)

The Sherburne Corporation was issued U.S. patent 3,241,255 on March 22, 1966 and Canadian patent 742,863 on September 20, 1966. Hanley had assigned the rights to Killington’s parent company because he had developed the wicket while on the area’s payroll. Interestingly, the patent applications anticipated sticky-backed tickets by noting that tickets could be secured to the wicket “with either an adhesive or staples.”

Wickets: Still Hanging around
Sherburne Corporation sued an Ohio firm for patent infringement in 1969 but eventually dropped the suit and sold the patent. “Others were infringing the patent [with different wicket shapes] but bringing lawsuits was costly. Since the patent only lasted for 17 years, it didn’t make sense to pursue the cases,” Smith says.

“The wickets sold for pennies, so it wasn’t worth the time or expense to sue. Ticket wicket wasn’t a money-making business, it was a way to solve problems,” Hanley adds.

Sometime in the 1970s, Killington shifted to using pressure-sensitive adhesive on the back of computer-generated tickets. In 2004–2005, the resort switched to the plastic tie that’s threaded through a coated “tag” ticket and looped to a closure. Although many areas have changed to tie-tag ticketing and others have adopted RFID cards, reports of the wicket’s demise are exaggerated: U.S. companies from coast to coast still manufacture and distribute ticket wickets, including Standard Portable (New York), Southington Tool & Manufacturing (Connecticut), and Amlon Industries and Gold Coast (California).

“Half the lift tickets sold today are secured to a guest via a wire wicket and half with ties,” says Jason Shoats, vice president of sales for Worldwide Ticketcraft. “Smaller areas can’t afford the new methods, and RFID [cards] are more expensive.”

A half-century later, Charlie Hanley’s ticket wicket is still hanging around.  

Vermont ski writer Karen Lorentz is author of Okemo: All Come Home, Killington: A Story of Mountains and Men, and The Great Vermont Ski Chase.

From the freestyling Seventies to the rock-and-roll Eighties and high-tech, high-ticket Nineties, men’s skiwear kept up with the times.  

By Barbara Alley Simon
Photography by Scott Markewitz

Park City locals had a blast modeling vintage men’s skiwear during Skiing History Week in Utah (see page 33). These classic outfits, selected from the Barbara Alley Collection at the Alf Engen Ski Museum, depict a three-decade progression of design for the male skier.

The 1970s was the decade of disco, the first freestylers, wet T-shirts and streakers, and men’s ski suits were sleek and sexy, as well as colorful for exhibitionist hotdoggers. The 1975 suits pictured in the photo above used stretch fabric with stretch insulation, which gave flex to the tight fit. Jackets were short, so pants needed higher waists and shoulder straps. Chris Neville’s red Bogner jacket has tri-color stripes that run down the back. Grandoe gloves pick up the trim. Nick Hansen’s bright yellow HCC (Henri–Charles Colsenet) two-piece has bell-bottomed pants that fit smoothly over ski boots. The hat is HCC; the goggles are by Smith; the poles are by Collins; skis by The Ski with Burt retractable bindings.

As you’ll see on subsequent pages, the 1980s began with classic colors but midway moved to neons. Silhouettes shifted too, from slim on the top and wide on bottom, to wide on the top with slimmer legs. The neons, of course, were great for flat light and finding kids. Thinner but warmer insulations (such as Thinsulate) and free-hanging waterproof liners (such as Gore-Tex) gave designers more play. Outfits may not have looked it, but they were warm.

The 1990s went high tech and high ticket. A suit that cost $245 in the ’70s could cost $1,000 by then, especially with embroidery. Solar fabrics, ceramic insulations and special liners all arrived on the scene, plus pockets—the more the merrier for men. 

I’ve always thought sexy stretch pants contributed to the growth and popularity of skiing. So what’s hot in 2014? Looks to me like Bubble Heads and Baggy Pants. Guess that leaves sexy to the imagination. 

By Seth Masia

In writing about the origins of the Head and Aluflex aluminum skis during the postwar years, ski historians have focused on the transfer of aviation technology from Glenn L. Martin Aircraft (Howard Head’s wartime employer) and from Vought-Sikorsky (employer of the TEY trio, Arthur Hunt, Wayne Pearce and Dave Richey). Because Head worked on succeeding versions of the Martin B-26 Marauder medium bomber, and the TEY team assisted in the evolution of the Vought F4U Corsair fighter, ski historians have assumed – and often stated – that the composite structures they created for postwar skis were derived from those two airplanes.

That’s not actually the case. Neither the Marauder nor the Corsair used the compound sandwich structures that made the new skis unique. Both aircraft were designed very rapidly in 1939, and had innovative features that made them extraordinarily fast for their era. Both adopted some new construction techniques – but none of these featured composite sandwiches. The Marauder had a uniquely streamlined fuselage and engine nacelles, requiring compound curves in the aluminum skin. Engineers led by Peyton Magruder came up with a new way to form the single-layer skin panels. To get the smoothest possible airflow over the aft fuselage, the Corsair employed a new technique to fasten single-layer aluminum panels without rivets: the panels were butted together over the frame and spot-welded into place. Neither of these techniques were used in the prototype Head or Vought/TEY skis.

In 1945, long after the Corsair was designed, Vought assigned the TEY team to create a consumer product that could take up production slack for the postwar years. The company chose this team because all three men were skiers, and the idea was to use Metalite construction to build a laminated aluminum ski. Metalite was an aluminum sandwich with a balsa wood core, made possible by Redux, a new phenol-formaldehyde-vinyl glue developed in England in 1941 and used in aircraft construction beginning in 1943 (the U.S. patent was filed late in 1944). Redux was designed specifically to glue metal and other impervious materials. Vought tried out Metalite in the F6U Pirate (photo top), an unsuccessful jet fighter designed in 1945. Vought’s first mass-production aircraft to use Metalite skin panels was the postwar F7U Cutlass shipboard jet fighter.

Similarly, Howard Head knew about a honeycomb-core sandwich structure developed at Martin long after the Marauder went into production (photo left: Howard Head cutting honeycomb cores). The process for making a tough plastic honeycomb for use as the core of panel structures was devised by George May at Dufay Chromex Ltd., and patented in May, 1944. The material Head used began as a paper honeycomb, soaked in plastic resin. In 1949. Martin engineer Theodore Pajak patented an aluminum-foil honeycomb and from about 1956 on it has been used extensively in jet planes, especially as flooring in all 

commercial airliners. This is the stuff familiar to skiers as the heart of the Hexcel ski (and the Hart HC Comp, and Century skis, and a lot of superlight XC racing skis).

Vought built 1,000 pairs of the original wood-core Truflex ski, a Metalite sandwich, making it the first aluminum ski to see mass production (photo right: Attenhofer Metallic, TEY Alu 60, Vought Truflex). Vought stayed busy after the war, developing jet fighters for the U.S. Navy, and even the Corsair remained in production until 1953 -- the French Navy bought new Corsairs for use in ground attack in Indo-China, and the US Marine Corps bought them for the same role in Korea). The company didn't need a consumer product, and dropped the ski. So the TEY team quit and launched their own ski factory. Vought had a patent on the Metalite wood-core design, so the TEY Alu 60 was a hollow beam using nested hat-section aluminum elements on top, and a flat aluminum base -- at first riveted together, and later all bonded together with Redux. The hollow-beam ski, an undamped spring, proved nearly unskiable on hard snow.

In the early 1950s, the TEY company invented snowmaking. That technology instantly outsold the Alu 60 ski, so the company licensed production to Attenhofer in Switzerland. Adolf Attenhofer contracted with sporting goods manufacturer Charles Dieupart to build the ski in France. In 1956 Dieupart, with the help of racer James Couttet, solved the skiability problem by reengineering the ski with a wood core under the hat-section top plate. The ski thus became the Aluflex and was a commercial success. A decade later, after Aluflex merged with Starflex to become Dynastar, race director Jean Liard put a flat plate atop the hat-section channel to creat the fabulously successful Dynastar MV2 GS race ski. Dynastar called that hat-section rib an "omega," and it became the factory's hallmark for decades.

Meanwhile, Howard Head used the Chromex-process plasticized honeycomb as the core for his early 1947 prototypes, using Redux or a similar metal-friendly glue to attach the aluminum sandwich layers. When these skis proved too fragile for real-world skiing, he resorted to a vertically laminated wood core (edge-on marine plywood), similar to the original Vought ski. But Head used Bostik, a powerful but flexible contact adhesive developed during the war from rubber-based shoe-sole glues. Bostik allowed the adjacent layers to flex easily against one another without coming apart. It helped Head skis feel smooth and snaky over rough icy trails. Today Bostik is widely used under wood flooring and in non-structural aircraft interiors.

Photos: Vought F6U Pirate jet fighter, the first American aircraft to use a Metalite skin. US Navy photo.

Howard Head cutting ski cores from plasticized paper honeycomb, 1947: Howard Head photo

From left to right: Attenhofer Metallic, TEY Alu 60/Aluflex, Vought Truflex. Photo by Jeff Leich / New England Ski Museum

At one time, Heierling was among the most famous names in skiing. In the postwar years, the Swiss company’s handmade leather boots equipped an entire generation of racing champions.

Beginning in 1885, cobbler Franz Heierling copied the Laupar shoe brought to Davos by Norwegian ski instructors. His son Hans introduced custom-made ski boots for jumpers, with a high supportive shaft. With the introduction of Guido Reuge’s Kandahar binding and the evolution of alpine technique in the 1930s, Heierling developed higher heels and longer lacing, in custom-fitted boots like the Allais Special II, used by Emile Allais, Walter Prager and Jack Ettinger, among other champions.

Beginning with the 1948 Olympics in St. Moritz, and through to the introduction of plastic boots after the 1964 games in Innsbruck, Heierling’s double boots, with brass-reinforced soles, equipped French, Swiss and American medalists. The Davos shop was able to produce up to 3,000 custom-fitted boots annually, mostly for skiers who had visited the shop at one time and had their feet measured. Heierling kept those measurements on file and could make replacement boots years later. With the introduction of injection-molded outsoles, the company was able to export about 15,000 pairs of mid-priced, mass-produced (non-custom) boots each year.

After 1972, to keep up with the boom in plastic boots, Heierling needed to collaborate with partner factories that could tool up for rapid mass production. Weinmann, the manufacturer of bicycle components, produced a cable-closure Heierling boot. Manufacturing moved to Slovenia, Italy and Germany. The brand name was licensed to Rhode Island retailer Harold Jacober. For a couple of decades Jacober sold it into ski shops across North America. At home in Davos, the brothers Thomas and Hans-Martin Heierling continued to operate a custom-fitting boot shop catering first to racers, then to the public, and by 1983 were also able to sell 90,000 pairs annually of Heierling-brand mass-produced ski boots into the wholesale trade. Even so, the highly competitive export environment forced the closure of many small boot factories, and Heierling shipped its last Italian-made boot in 1997.

The family returned to its roots in custom fitting. In 2000, Heierling’s Sportschuh-Fitting-Center became the Heierling Salomon Racing Center. Among others, Lindsey Vonn, Bode Miller and Didier Cuche got their boots fitted there. In 2005 Atomic licensed Heierling’s patented I-Flex technology; based on that, Hans-Martin, with Sven Coomer, developed Atomic’s very successful Hawx series boots. In 2013, Hans-Martin launched the Swiss-made Heierling H1, made of a temperature-tolerant material to maintain consistent flex down to -20° Celsius. The limited-production boot is available in Switzerland, Austria, France and the United States.